Known flow traffic estimation techniques are methods of measuring traffic of flows transferred over a current network, and make use of a method of storing all pieces of traffic (reference population) transferred for a given time and predicting traffic attributes of a parent population using characteristics of the reference population.
Among the methods, the typical one includes “traffic estimation for the largest sources on a network using packet sampling with limited storage”, which is proposed by Hewlett Packard company.
In conjunction with this method, each router constituting the network typically stores information about received traffic and transmitted traffic, and transmits the information about the received and transmitted traffic to a specific sever (e.g. simple network management protocol (SNMP) server) using an SNMP.
However, this known method can merely predict the characteristics of the traffic transferred over the current network, but it cannot provide a bandwidth of the traffic requested actually, and so on.
For example, as illustrated in FIG. 1, three routers R1, R2 and R3 are interconnected in a row. It is assumed that the bandwidths between the routers R1 and R2 and the routers R2 and R3 at present be 100 Mbps and 50 Mbps, respectively. A traffic volume of 80 Mbps, which is received by the first router R1, is transferred to the router R3 with a traffic volume of 50 Mbps. As a result, the traffic volume of 30 Mbps is lost at the router R2.
Meanwhile, FIG. 2 illustrates the configuration and concept of a system in order to explain a known process in which a plurality of routers R1 through R4 transfer traffic information to a specific server (SNMP server) M.
As illustrated in FIG. 2, each of the multiple routers R1 through R4 constituting a known network stores its own received and transferred traffic information, and transfers the received and transferred traffic information to the SNMP server M. The SNMP server M forms information about distribution of the entire traffic of the network on the basis of the information received from the routers R1 through R4.
FIG. 3 is a schematic view explaining the process in which each router calculates traffic information.
As illustrated in FIG. 3, each router calculates information about received traffic using a method of measuring a volume of the received traffic through a traffic calculator 100 and storing the measured traffic volume in a traffic estimation table 200. A received data packet is transferred to and processed at a data packet processor 300.